Regional development quangos are to be scrapped. Why not replace them with regional assemblies?

“Scandalous,” says John Prescott. “Pure economic vandalism,” tweets David Miliband. The Government – shock, horror – is to scrap the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and replace them with watered down, partially council-controlled “local enterprise partnerships”.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the complex web of government, quasi-government and krypto-government bodies that eat up the country’s economic oxygen and pump out the financial equivalent of carbon dioxide (or perhaps carbon monoxide).

But put simply, the RDAs are quangos established to promote economic development around the country, via six different government departments and with a £2 billion budget. They also distribute EU largess, which is why across the country one sees little EU flags on building sites suggesting that Brussels is subsidising England. Of course the UK gives far more to the EU than it gets back, so what those flags actually signify is that for every pound we’re giving, they’re generously handing us back 80p in chump change (and much of the 20 per cent goes on propaganda spending on things like EU flags on building sites).

But are they being abolished purely for financial reasons? Left-Foot Forward suggests otherwise: "Philosophically, the Conservatives see RDAs as a Trojan horse for wider regionalism, which they abhor in their marrow," the leading pro-Labour blog stated last week. "Despite themselves setting up Government Offices in the regions in 1994, their instincts remain resolutely centralist."

That was certainly true once, but the problem with this theory is that the RDAs largely exist because voters in English regions rejected proposals for regional assemblies, and so, rather than just scraping the idea, those powers were transferred to unelected bodies.

And one can see how undemocratic and unaccountable these bodies are merely by the names they chose for themselves and the language they used. The Yorkshire region was not just the Yorkshire Regional Agency but “Yorkshire Forward” which, according to the clearly self-written Wikipedia entry, carried the slogan: "Yorkshire Alive with Opportunity!" which “represents a new 'one voice' approach to a region that is as successful and dynamic as it is diverse.” Meanwhile Geordies were represented by “One North East”, which sounds like a pretentious Hoxton bar, and Brummies had “Advantage West Midlands”. No democratically accountable organisation on earth uses such language.

But are the Tories opposed to regionalisation? I don’t see why. Personally I think a federal United Kingdom is a great idea, but it has to be authentically democratic, not a collection of talking shops comprising local councillors and quangocrats, which is what Labour’s original plans entailed.

There’s no reason why Britain can’t become fully federal with 11 regions (or “states” if the Scots and Welsh prefer it) all with elected first ministers and assemblies, and with full or dominant control of police, education, welfare and tax. It would help to take away power from London, which has far too much economic and cultural power, and rejuvenate regional capitals; it would result in national political leaders with experience of government, not just party politics; it would allow innovations in services to be tried and tested; but best of all, as in the USA, politics would become much more Right-wing.